Monthly Spearfishing Report, South Africa

Conditions

One or two fair sized westerly fronts coming up from the Cape but no major blows as yet. Cold nights the norm now if you live on the escarpment with night-time temps reaching as low as four degrees celsius in the Bothas Hill area on the back of a cold front. Certainly one of the best Julys for many a year with settled seas and lots of clean water all along the coast.

Fish-wise

A lot of garrick coming out at Ifafa this month with some good sized fish up to 15kg being landed. The biggest one I heard of was a beauty of 22kg landed by Brendan who lives right there and most of the regulars have the privilege of parking on his property. Garrick are limited to two per diver per day with these limits put in place to try and protect the stocks. If you feel anything for the ocean stick to these limits as the garrick numbers have dropped drastically over the last thirty years. Some big cuda being landed by anglers over the 30kg mark but divers not having that much luck. The odd daga salmon being landed and the wrecks are always worth a look this time of year. South pier relatively quiet with regard to geelbek but this could all change at any time. A 14kg cracker was shot here towards the end of the month so looks like the early season big ones have arrived. Some very big snoek about but as with all the gamefish action you need to be in the right place and that is not so easy to pick. A lot of divers spending plenty of time in the water without seeing a gamefish but always worth a try during the sardine period.

Spearfishing World Championships

Dates for this are 14 to 19 September 2010. Hosted by Croatia with the main base being Mali Losinj. This address will take you to the Worlds web site www.spearfishingwc.com . The guys are raffling one of Eric Allards trips out to Latham Banks which is a fantastic prize and worth buying a few tickets for the chance of winning.

Sardine Action

Sardines netted as far north as Umdloti with patchy shoals up and down the coast. The Bluff had some good sardine action on Saturday 17 July with 18 C water temps. The next day the water temp was 20C and the sardines were nowhere to be seen. A lot of red eye action with many of these shoals mistaken for sardines from the shore. Not much shark or gamefish activity with these shoals.

Freedivers Bluewater Classic

The weather is looking very settled for this competition and reports from anglers are of a lot of gamefish activity. There are over sixty entrants and I will have a report up on the site after the comp.